Week of Wining & Dining and Rule #44

It's hard to fail a rule telling you to drink a glass of wine with dinner every night. Sometimes we were even overachievers...



This next week, Rule #44: Pay more, eat less will be more of a challenge. My biggest food obstacle is overeating. This week we will really REALLY focus on the delciousness involved in every bite of food. Got to make it count! We will pay more and hopefully make up for it within our food budget by eating less.

Give Me Another One, Just Like the Other One & Rule #43

Our rule to regard nontraditional food with skepticism was so similar to many of the others we have done...basically eat food....not food-like substances that food scientists have created. We are getting so good at these types of rules that it has just sort of become our everyday diet (just like we originally hoped!).

We love the bulk section at Winco because you can get healthy things for super cheap.



The lesson is that you must read the ingredients (or notice their unnatural color!) because some things are definitely more food scientist creations than actual food, despite what the large sign might suggest...

Next week's rule is amazing! Rule #43: Have a glass of wine with dinner. YES PLEASE! This is a rule that Ryan and I will be able to stand behind one hundred and fifty percent!

Turning Japanese & Rule #42

We stuck with the traditional Japanese diet almost all week with only a few exceptions. Every morning we ate miso soup or rice and egg. For lunch and dinners we had tofu, rice, noodles, veggies, soy sauce, miso, ginger, fruit, fish, fish and more fish. The only time we strayed from this diet was when we ate outside of our house. On Saturday night we celebrated my birthday and my mother cooked us some french food (there is no better birthday present than a home cooked meal by your mother--especially if your mother is as good of cook as mine!).

The hardest part about this week was avoiding white flour (aka bread!). A traditional Japanese diet only consists of maybe rice flour or buckwheat flour (no wonder Japanese are so skinny--bread is something I eat way too much of). Japanese also do not eat very many sweets (a daily battle I struggle with). I felt like my meals filled me up more quickly because they were so full of protein. Also, Japanese only traditionally eat until they are 80% full--this was hard for me to stick to. Overall, I felt extremely healthy this week!

Here are just a few pictures of some of the meals we had (I did not capture nearly all of them and Ryan is currently in the kitchen cooking our last Japanese meal of the week--a veggie tofu stir-fry that smells amazing).

We obviously had to try out some traditional Japanese beer.



Japanese noodles and veggies.



Salmon and miso green beans.


Had to go out for sushi (we have all of the materials to make our own but we have still not gotten around to it).


My friend Susie trying to protect herself from the crazy boys taking sake bombs.


Next week we are moving on to Rule #42: Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. Basically this rule boils down to avoid foods created by food scientists.

Supplements-Be-Gone and Rule #41

We managed the whole week without any supplements. This is what we said goodbye to:



Ryan accidentally bought orange juice fortified with calcium but that was are only real mishap. The good news is that I did not get sick (gasp!). I was pretty sure I was going to be sick more due to the psycho-somatic reasons than anything else. Whenever I was craving a vitamin I picked up a piece of fruit instead. I'm still not too sure about this rule because I believe you should be eating foods that provide you with all the vitamins you need; however, what if you are not aware of the things your body needs? Is it better to be safe and take vitamins than sorry later? Also, can you really get too many vitamins? SO many questions I haven't had time to find the answers!

In other news we celebrated a wonderful mother's day with my favorite mother in the whole entire world. Ryan made a spinach gruyere strata and I made sour cream coffee cake with strawberries and strudel. We had a wonderful day!

The next week we will be on the mouthful that is Rule #41: Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. We went shopping tonight and loaded up on groceries for Japanese food. We will also be researching traditional Japanese breakfasts and other eating habits. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Some junk, Some Adventure & Rule #40

I had a lot of grand plans...such as making homemade donuts. We were having burgers for dinner, however, and I thought onion rings would be a good start to cooking homemade junk food. And by the time I finished with the onion rings I could not bear to look at, much less EAT, anything cooked in that amount of oil. So beer-battered onion rings were our homemade junk food this week and they were delicious. It was my first time making them. Ryan whipped up a spicy creamy sauce and I was in heaven. Even though they were onion rings they tasted healthier because I made them--less grease and less salt. At the same time, making this meal myself made me realize how unhealthy they were--they were fried in a huge pot of oil....so that meant that I ate less, or at least didn't want to make the donuts for dessert that I intended on cooking.






In other news my wonderful life partner cooked an amazing Asian meal. Please see the pictures below of the tofu stir fry, citrus sesame salad, and noodle crab cakes and you will understand why I am marrying this guy.




Next week we will be following Rule #40: Be the kind of person who takes supplements--then skip the supplements. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! I don't care if it's mental or what but I rely on my supplements like none other. My prediction is that I will get sick without them. The challenge will be trying to eat healthy enough foods that I won't need the supplements. I am guessing there will be a lot of fish in my future this week.

In happier news here is the most beautiful orange I have ever seen:


PS. I can't end this post without mentioning that I went food trippin' this past week with Erin. I don't know if you have ever heard about this but it is seriously weird. You dissolve this berry (in pill form) and swish it around your mouth. It then blocks off certain taste buds so that you experience food entirely differently--most food became sweet. Tonic water tasted like soda! Lemons tasted like lemonade! I was peer pressured into this but I was happy I tried it. Luckily, the effect only lasts an hour and then your taste buds return to normal. I highly recommend this activity!